The Gretsch short-scale "Laydie Belle" Irish Tenor banjo is designed for playing traditional music. Loud and proud with a Whyte-Laydie tone ring and three-ply solid maple rim, the G9480 comes with special-gauge strings for Irish Tenor tuned GDAE (one octave below a mandolin) so mandolin and fiddle players can add banjo to their tonal palettes. With other string gauges it can also be tuned as a standard tenor (CGDA) or "Chicago Tuning" (DGBE) for guitarists and ukulele players.